San Francisco Food Blog

Steven Gdula

Gobba Gobba Hey's chocolate glacage gobs.

​Steven Gdula of Gobba Gobba Hey shared some exclusive news with SFoodie this morning: He'll pen a book for Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury USA for a spring 2011 release.

"It'll be part cookbook, part food memoir, and part recession recovery story," Gdula said of the yet-to-be-titled tome, set to include 52 recipes for gobs as well as a narrative on the local street-food scene that inspired Gobba Gobba Hey's 2009 inception.

timeoutnewyork/Flickr

Chang: A bad case of produce envy.

​The day after publication of his book, the wonderful Momofuku (Clarkson Potter, $40), SFoodie spoke wiith New York chef David Chang. You know, the guy who stirred up a shit storm earlier this month with the comment that "fuckin' every restaurant in San Francisco is just serving figs on a plate." In the aftermath, the NorCal Asia Society canceled an event with Chang scheduled for early November, when the chef will be in town to promote Momofuku.

SFoodie: Gotta ask you about the "figs on a plate" controversy.
Chang: It's just retardedly stupid. Number one, where did journalism go? The thing was totally taken out of context -- I can't believe I'm the guy saying that context thing. And even if it wasn't, you have reporters who are reporting on something they have no information on. If they [the Asia Society] wanna cancel an event, we'll just move on. Why would people get upset? I'm not gonna retract what I said. I think everybody needs to chill out. People need to smoke more marijuana in San Francisco.

SFoodie: I think they already do.
Chang: They need to smoke MORE! We were talking about creativity and things happening in America, not just in San Francisco. America lags in creativity, especially compared to Europe. We're generally five to six years behind.
California produce is so awesome. People in New York would die to get [California] ingredients. A lot of chefs in New York spend a lot of money bringing those ingredients in from California. I'm so envious. It's the same thing that [Coi's] Daniel [Patterson] is trying to say: Let's try to be creative, you have access to the greatest produce, arguably, in the world, it's wonderful. It's the same thing I said about steakhouses: Why do we need 20 steakhouses in New York? And we're not producing cooks in this country, these young people -- we're just teaching them technique.

[At the New York Food and Wine event] I did mention restaurants like Chez Panisse and Oliveto, they've been wildly important, but we need more people doing more creative stuff, and not just in San Francisco but in New York, too. I mean, Quince is hard-school Alice Waters, and yet it's a wonderful restaurant. Of course not everybody is doing figs on a plate. I'm really excited about a lot of restaurants in San Francisco, you've got so many great chefs. There's Nancy Oakes, Gary Danko, Roland Passot.

North Point Press

He sees dead people.

​William Grimes is coming to town, presumably not to educate us tofu-brained San Franciscans about what constitutes real food. Before he started writing about dead people, Grimes was, of course, a legendary reviewer of restaurants for the New York Times. His first book concerned cocktails, their histories and associated lore; his latest tome, Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York (North Point Press, $30), examines the Big Apple's dining culture, from deluxe ice cream parlors to glitzy oyster bars, no-frills chop houses and today's hyper-marketed swirls of lofty concepts and multicultural fusion. If you give a fig, Grimes will be discussing this endeavor -- and perhaps signing a few volumes -- tomorrow at Omnivore Books (3885 Cesar Chavez at Church), 6-7 p.m.

​Nobody ever said New York chef David Chang didn't have huevos, and we're not talking the slow-poached kind that show up in the ramen at Noodle Bar. Chang's thoughts about San Francisco chefs may have raised a crap storm in certain quarters locally, but that isn't stopping the master of Momofuku from dropping down at SFO early next month -- after, that is, a mini slog through national media. Chang's Beard-worthy cookbook and memoir, Momofuku (Clarkson Potter, $40) drops next Tuesday, same day he's slated for appearances on the Today Show and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Then on Nov. 5, Chang is scheduled for a two-hour signing fest at Williams-Sonoma in Union Square. Two days later (Saturday, Nov. 7) he shows up at Sur La Table in the Ferry Building, and on Sunday at Omnivore Books (with Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu). Between those S.F. appearances? pure speculation, but we wouldn't be surprised by Chang sightings at Incanto and/or Chez Panisse, where plates can get awfully figgy (Chang acknowledges both Chris Cosentino and Alice Waters in Momofuku shout-outs). What makes his S.F. appearance all the ballsier? It's one of only two he's making for the publisher (the other's in Seattle). Don't expect any blanket apology to local chefs, just subtle message tweaking. And lots of healthy book hype. But hey, having pored through an advance copy of Momofuku, we can tell you it's a joint totally worth the pitch.

Sax: Manhattan mile-highs are one thing, but what about eco pastrami?

​This SFoodie blogger for one is curious to see how deli researcher David Sax reacts when encountering the food at Saul's Deli (1475 Shattuck at Vine, Berkeley) for a book appearance this Saturday. Sax, a Canadian, has written a book called Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24), published earlier this month. With its eco-Berkeley green restaurant credentials (no straws or bottled sodas here!), and Niman Ranch pastrami, Saul's is arguably apples-to-oranges different from your typical deli. For starters, Saul's doesn't serve mile-high sandwiches, almost always stacked with conventionally raised meats, the way Katz's, Junior's, and other "famous" Jewish delis do. There will be a lot to mull over at the Berkeley stop of Sax's book tour, which includes a signing. Event starts at 4 p.m., and a Saul's special tasting plate will be offered all day so customers can see what all the fuss is about.

Pastelia anyone?

​If you've been thinking about a DIY approach to your Halloween candy this year, check out local sweets expert Anita Chu tomorrow at Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez at Church). Chu will be on hand at 3 p.m. talking about her book Field Guide to Candy: How to Identify and Make Virtually Every Candy Imaginable (Quirk Books, $15.95), which details both traditional and exotic treats from around the world. In person, Chu is pleasant and smart, exactly the kind of teacher you want on any dive into at-home candy-making. Start with peanut butter cups, and work your way to pastelia, Greek honey candy. For another worldly foray, you can also do a batch of Turkish Delight. Chu's book covers not only how to prepare your sweet treats, but how to serve and later store them, too. Although, if you've done it right, there probably shouldn't be any candy leftovers to stow away. Which is a hopeful sign that the kids will save their tricks for the (decidedly lesser) spots that put out bowls of Kit Kats and call it a night.

Ankou/Flickr

Chop suey, America's gateway dish.

​Apparently, we have some New York City bohos to thank (or curse) for the birth of chop suey, the slippery Americanized dish that still shows up at many of the approximately 40,000 Chinese restaurants around the country. Chop suey, a "mixed pieces" hodgepodge of meat cooked quickly with veggies and doused with cornstarch-thickened sauce, has its detractors, and rightly so. But history suggests it single-handedly helped grow America's interest in eating Chinese. Like egg rolls and chow mein, it's served as a gateway dish to generations of Americans. Author Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford University Press, $24.95) details the evolution of our fascination with Chinese food. Coe will be speaking at a free event tonight at Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez at Church), from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Should all that talk about noodles and egg rolls whet your appetite, the nearby Eric's Restaurant (1500 Church at 27th St.) offers chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, and Mongolian beef in a relaxed setting even your non-Asian great grandmother might've loved.

marco annunziata/Flickr

Dario Cecchini, master butcher of Tuscany.

​Butchery fans with trust funds, next month you'll want to pony up some serious coin. For the cost of a $275 ticket at Meatpaper's sponsored event, you'll get up to three and a half hours ogle time with artisan butchery king Dario Cecchini as he demonstrates the art of meat cutting. Hosting him stateside is a rare treat, and a coup for the Meatpaper gals. On Saturday, October 24, Cecchini will give a demonstration by breaking down a steer and a pig "with mastery" in front of guests at the Cowell Theater (at Fort Mason). Cecchini is the Tuscan master butcher-chef-proprietor famously chronicled in loving detail by author Bill Buford in Heat. Cecchini's family has been in the butchery business for 250 years, and his shop is a culinary destination for tourists. No word on how much Dante Cecchini will recite, but it's one of the things he's known for. Snacks and beverages will be provided (for $275, those snacks had better be more than crackers and a hunk of pepper Jack), with an intermission. Doors open at 1 p.m.; the demo goes from 2 to 5:30. For a closer, there will be a book signing with Douglas Gayeton, photographer and author of the new book Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town.

​About halfway through "Animals," one of Fear of Music's headiest jams, David Byrne begins grunting (and repeating for the rest of the song in various slightly altered forms) a few lines that have always made us titter: "They say they don't need money/They're living on nuts and berries/They say animals don't worry/They're living on nuts and berries." If there's a message in Byrne's nonsensical lyrics, we're pretty sure it's not a call to forage. Still, being preoccupied with food, whenever we hear them, we very literally imagine grizzled hunter-gatherers pawing through a barren, shrub-pocked expanse for rudimentary snacks. For better or for worse, whenever we read about foragers and the sustainable foraging movement, we hear the song clattering away in our head -- hollow and distant, as if it were beamed in from a tin can recording studio at the bottom of a deep canyon.

Of course, real foragers -- not the hapless ones of our post-apocalyptic fantasies -- don't limit themselves to nuts and berries. In Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager (Skipstone, $26.95), the new book by former Bay Area resident Langdon Cook, foraging isn't just a path to reconnecting with nature; it's a way to eat well -- and enjoy some real adventure on the side. We haven't read the book, but it looks like a page-turner -- if descriptions of free-diving for snaggletooth ling cod in Puget Sound and trudging up mountains for morels tend to hold your attention as raptly as they do ours. Configured around the seasons of the year, each chapter hones in on a particular food and ends with a recipe. If you want a taste, he has a blog too.

The Chez Pim blogger's book: Raising questions?

​Over at Eat Me Daily, Helen Rosner went totally Universal Soldier on The Foodie Handbook: The (almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy -- O.G. Bay Area food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit's debut softcover (Chronicle Books, $24.95). On the brink of serious mainstream exposure, Pim very recently surfaced as the subject of a short New York Times piece debating blogger ethics. In addition to being a blogger, a writer, and a freewheeling scarfer-about-the-globe, she's now "brand cheerleader" for Rachel's, a line of yogurt and cottage cheese products owned by the $12 billion dairy corporation Dean Foods.

Rosner skirts this issue and sticks it -- really sticks it -- to the book, leveling a dizzying parade of charges: Pim wants to be Rachael Ray, except fancier and more than a little elitist. Her book is poorly organized. Her descriptions of the ways foods taste are weak and uninspiring. She hangs her hat on an overused buzzword -- "foodie" -- but clings to "a frustratingly undemocratic definition of what qualifies." Rosner scorches on: "In her list of fifty things that foodies must do in their life, she tosses off decrees with the oblivious nonchalance of a socialite: we aren't granted the title of foodie if we try for a table at El Bulli; we receive that honor only if we manage to actually get one...shouldn't the goal here be finding pleasure in the daily act of sustenance? Being a foodie isn't something you do for show, it's what you are even when no one is looking."

Now, we haven't read the book, so we're just going to hang back, fan at the smoke, and chuckle, but the first comment to Rosner's review begs a semi-fresh question worth paring away from the fray. According to the commenter known only as ~m, "most bloggers shouldn't write anything longer than 500 words" -- presumably meaning that Techamuanvivit should have stuck to the rivers and lakes she was used to. In his or her general expressed sentiment, ~m is probably correct. A blog is often essentially a diary of a person's ongoing relationship with something very broad -- like food, sports, or movies -- or alternately, something very specific -- like Things My Date Really Said Last Night. The blog form doesn't always easily translate to a fully realized, coherent, focused treatise. In addition, a lot of bloggers write as if they're running out of breath. Many would surely love to sling their lifestyles à la Pim. All the same, couldn't it work the other way around too? Isn't blogging in its most evolved state by now some kind of an art form as well? Should even serious scribes with books under their belts and lofty contributing editor positions at respected magazines think twice before starting up a blog just because the kids are doing it? We're not suggesting M.F.K. Fisher would have been a shitty blogger, just wondering if the particular issue isn't to some extent a two-way street.

joyofkeepingchickens.com

Backyard fowl is a modern essential.

​As she cheerfully reports, Tablehopper is in Jerez this week -- swilling sherry, noshing on jamon, perhaps celebrating the completion of the manuscript for her upcoming book. While Tuesday's bulletin was understandably dosa-thin, she did not fail to ferry along something worth reading: a book recommendation, more specifically, a first-person testimonial from Peter Mulvihill of Green Apple Books. The text in question -- Jennifer Megyesi's The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit -- might prove useful to readers enamored enough with urban homesteading to start their own little house on the Haight.

Amazon calls this book "the most comprehensive full-color chicken book ever," which is about as good a blurb as a book about anything at all could ask for. Buoyed by Megyesi's advice, Mulvihill recounts his foray into fowl-rearing with delight, describing how his family's "picky-eater preschoolers" provided plenty of scraps for the growing flock, how he had to slaughter, pluck, cook, and eat "Tillie" when she turned out to be, not an egg-layer, but a small, strutting rooster with an ever-growing comb and an ear-splitting cockle-doodle-doo. He shares some good information as well. In San Francisco, you can keep up to four chickens -- or any legal animal for that matter. Hens are hardy; you can leave them unattended for days on end, providing someone -- a neighbor, a friend -- regularly harvests the eggs. It might be easier than you think. If you're curious, read the bulletin, buy the book, and keep checking Craigslist for coops.

ForageSF

Rabins, subject of our anthology-worthy feature story.

​Local forage guru Iso Rabins is up for more exposure than he got at Eat Real in Oakland last Saturday, where he was hawking sea beans for three bucks a box. "Out of the Wild," a March cover story about Rabins by SF Weekly staff writer Peter Jamison, will appear in Best Food Writing 2009, to be published in the fall. And just because we're all about saving you cash (so you can afford, oh, an extra gob or something), you can read Jamison's piece here. For free.
Way to go, Peter.

Hot and (formerly) heavy: Frank Bruni.

​Weight, weight, don't tell me! On Monday night, September 14, Naomi Epel Presents and Scala's Bistro (432 Powell at Sutter) are fêting former N.Y. Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, whose memoir-slash-"overeater's story," Born Round: The Secret History of a Full Time Eater, has already gotten the equivalent of a plate-load of national press. Scala's chef Jennifer Biesty is said to be preparing a fabulous Italian dinner in honor of the Italian-American reporter and his book.

Tough to fathom the handsome (and sooo gay) Bruni -- that's him over on the left -- ever had even one worry about his looks, but apparently he has a lifetime of eating secrets and weight struggles. Bruni did make certain changes (like signing up with a personal trainer) before working as the Times' critic, and he definitely knows his appointment was loaded with irony.

The Scala's evening promises a four-course dinner with wine and a signed copy of the Born Round tome, $115 for singles and $199 for couples. Advance tickets are needed.

​Here's a cookbook event with a thirst-quenching twist. This Thursday, Palo Alto restaurant Reposado (236 Hamilton at Ramona) will host a special tequila chef-author dinner with TV personality Joanne Weir. She's the author of 17 cookbooks, hosts the TV series Joanne Weir's Cooking Class, and was recently spotted at opening night of SF Chefs.Food.Wine. (she joined a panel on heirloom tomatoes the next day).

Thursday's four-course dinner comes with what's being called a "special" tequila cocktail, Don Julio vertical tequila tasting, tax, tip, and a signed copy of Weir's book, Tequila: Types, Flights, Cocktails and Bites. Tickets are $88 per person ($155 for couples), and the event is cosponsored by Kepler's Books, The American Institute of Wine & Food, and The Luncheon Society. For reservations, call Kepler's at (650) 324-4321.

The proposed menu includes:

Chorizo empanadas and pineapple carpaccio with prawn and pepper salad

Gazpacho with drunken prawns

Choice of entrée: bamboo salmon with mango-avocado salsa, grilled tequila chicken breast with black bean and corn salsa, or carne asada verde (skirt steak with a tequila-chipotle-tomatillo salsa)

Tequilamisu

Farm City

Not as idyllic as you might think.

​Oakland farmer and Ghost Town Farm blogger Novella Carpenter has a book detailing what it's like to nurture a farm plot -- in an "affordable" part of downtown Oakland. Carpenter is reading from her book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, at Omnivore Books (3885a Cesar Chavez at Church) from 3 to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The book describes dumpster-diving for vegetable scraps, delivering salad greens to the Black Panther's youth literacy program, and raising bees, chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs -- even Nigerian dwarf goats -- through trial and error, often funny.

At Ghost Town Farm, Carpenter waxes enthusiastic about the upcoming Eat Real Festival, while detailing plans for an open house (free, donations accepted) at her farm on August 29. Sounds like chicken-slaughter and fire enthusiasts will have lots to take in on that one. A tour and snacks are included.

Recipes designed to keep on giving.

Cookbook author Danielle Svetcov wants to get all up in your shit -- literally. Svetcov's book is called The Un-Constipated Gourmet: Secrets to a Moveable Feast (Sourcebooks, $15.99). It promises to address the needs of what the author calls "the constipated or potty-challenged," who, she says, are a "very, very large group." Svetcov will appear at Cover to Cover booksellers (1307 Castro at 24th St.) Saturday at 5 p.m.

Her cookbook offers 125 recipes designed to keep you regular, dishes like pasta puttanesca, pizza with shrimp, and Gorgonzola-stuffed dried fig salad -- a list that leads us to infer that Italians are uniquely gifted with peristalsis. The author's fondness for superfoods seems to fit her mission of providing good -- even gourmet -- eats that pack plenty of nutritive value and, oh yeah, less unproductive time on the can.

Svetcov is a San Francisco writer and lit agent. She's made memorable (read: funny) appearances as a judge for the Literary Death Match series. The Un-Constipated Gourmet may be embarrassing to some, and a favorite for others. Hey, whatever works. What you do (or don't do) on the toilet is strictly your business.

Cooking with Amy/Flickr

Hirigoyen: Basque master.

Cookbook fans, rev up your engines and head over the Golden Gate Bridge tonight for a tasty book signing. Piperade/Bocadillos chef Gerald Hirigoyen recently authored (with Lisa Weiss) Pintxos: Small Plates in the Basque Tradition (Ten Speed Press, $24.95). It's a cookbook about pintxos (peench-ohs), the Basque term for tapas or finger foods. Recipes include ham dust, aïoli, duck breast with oranges and green olives, and a yummy-sounding fried chicken sandwich. Pantry and wine suggestions, too.

Hirigoyen, who has a Basque background, is also the author of The Basque Kitchen. Tonight's appearance is from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Tyler Florence Shop (59 Throckmorton at Corte Madera, Mill Valley) -- see with your own eyes the scene of the missing fork. TyFlo is scheduled to do an intro, followed by Hirigoyen and Weiss conducting the signing and a Q & A.

In Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking in California (UC Press, $24.95), Sonoma State professor Jonah Raskin writes about more than just day-to-day operations at family-run, organic Oak Hill Farm alongside Mexican immigrants, an Irish mechanic, and a French beekeeper. Raskin also describes the growth and history of the organic movement, touching on Jack London (who named Sonoma the Valley of the Moon), Luther Burbank, Robert Rodale, Adelle Davis, Wendell Berry, and even Rudolf Steiner, the mystical German father of biodynamics. Other inhabitants and chroniclers of Sonoma, including M. F. K. Fisher, Alice Waters, Slow Food's Carlo Petrini, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Michael Pollan, show up -- dare we say organically? The author also shows us the local (and international) problems of development, global warming, and honeybee colony collapse, as well as the organic agribusiness that fuels Whole Foods. Though Raskin is not a particularly lyrical writer, you may find yourself putting down the book to prepare a meal like the one he describes on page 167: "three ears of freshly picked corn with butter and black pepper and sliced tomatoes with vinegar and DaVero olive oil ... I stopped and looked at the ear of corn in my hands. I thought of where it was grown; I remembered the day it was picked, and then I took another bite and chewed slowly. It was delicious." When Raskin quotes Wendell Berry's "eating is an agricultural act," it doesn't take long to realize that writing can be one, also.

In Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26.00) Jason Sheehan rolls and ties an autobiographical narrative of a life spent toiling in the lower regions of food. Sheehan is resto critic for Westword, the Denver alt weekly and SF Weekly sister pub. His memoir ia a double dip into testosterone mash, stirred up with the gritty glamour of line work (it pays overt homage to Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential). You damn near catch a whiff of scrotum in writing like the following, in a chapter about working nights in a diner alongside drunks and junkies: "Full body hard. That's the phrase we used to describe new hires who we knew would probably make it okay ... a guy who was a straight-up, toes-to-top boner in those last couple minutes before the rush came in; stiff as wood and just so goddamn excited to see what was coming that if you breathed on him wrong, he would've popped."

Call it kitchen-line bromance, a genre you can sample these days even in the blogosphere (take a look at line cook, the ramblings of Nopa sous chef Richie Nakano). But Sheehan, a fierce writer, imbues the formula with restless meaning: the transcendence of the $6-an-hour loser. "We do it because here, we're part of something. We're expected, which is only a big deal to people who understand what it's like not to be expected anywhere." Sheehan ends with his acceptance of a James Beard medal for a Westword piece about barbecue. The scene comes off as a curiously depressed anticlimax, as if the author -- by stepping off the kitchen line -- had long ago extinguished any animating spark. As if, in some perverse way, success gave him the kind of legitimacy that squelched his slacker soul: a deliciously bittersweet ending.

Giulia Melucci's I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (Grand Central Publishing, $23.99) is a real beach read, the foodie equivalent of chick lit. The author exhaustively details various affairs with men who are -- all together now! -- afraid of commitment, down to the last post-coital bowls of spaghetti and subsequent passive-aggressive emails. Brand names (clothes, rock groups, restaurants) are thick on the ground in this first work by a veteran of New York's PR and publishing worlds. Melucci seems determined to avoid comparisons with Sex and the City, but undermines the effort not only by referencing it twice in the text and once in a chapter title, but also by Mario Batali's cover blurb ("... a foodie's dream version of Sex and the City!"). There are recipes (most adapted from other sources) with encompassable lists of easily obtained ingredients, though occasionally dubious (three tablespoons of truffle oil for a half-pound of spaghettini?). Serious eaters and serious readers may be annoyed, but the book is not without its girlish charms. The main difference from chick lit? In the end, the heroine remains manless, if well fed. We're thinking sequel.

Moira Hodgson's It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $24.95) might have been subtitled The Education of a Restaurant Critic. The author's addition to an ever-expanding list of food memoirs will surprise (and probably charm) anyone unfamiliar with her New York Observer food reviews. Daughter of an English diplomat-cum-spy, Hodgson grew up in Egypt, Beirut, Stockholm, and Saigon as well as England, along the way feasting on both native cooking and British grub. Tales of bohemian life in Greenwich Village, Paris, London, Spain, and Marrakesh, and of affairs with, among others, a temperamental Argentine ballet dancer and poet William Merwin (not to mention writing gigs that included subbing for Mimi Sheraton at the New York Times and a stint at Vanity Fair) are lightly salted with recipes. They range from her grandmother's wartime steamed puddings (probably not worth attempting) to a more alluring lamb tagine with green olives. Like Hodgson's stories, it sounds delicious.

Meredith Brody

We thought that attending the recent conversation between Alain de Botton and Will Hearst at City Arts and Lectures on the occasion of the publication of de Botton's new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work would be a night off from our obsession with the pleasures and sorrows of food.

But noooo! After briefly citing his source of inspiration (Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day, which de Botton read to his two young children), it turned out that de Botton had spent four months of his life tracing the journey of tuna from the Indian Ocean to dinner plates in England.

Locavores, stop reading right now: By page 42, de Botton is tracking 12,000 California strawberries waiting "in the semi-darkness" in an enormous food warehouse: "They flew in from California yesterday, crossing over the Arctic Circle by moonlight.... At any given moment, half the contents of the warehouse are seventy-two hours away from being inedible...The supermarket will never again let the shifting axis of the earth delay its audience's dietary satisfactions: strawberries journey in from Israel in midwinter, from Morocco in February, from Spain in spring, from Holland in early summer, from England in August and from the groves behind San Diego between September and Christmas. There is only ninety-six hours' leeway between the moment the strawberries are picked and the moment they start to cave in to attacks of grey mould."

Remember the Woody Allen movie Sleeper, where a cryogenically frozen man wakes up 200 years later to find that junk food is good for you? In her James Beard Award-winning cookbook Fat: An Appreciation of A Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (Ten Speed Press), Jennifer McLagan conjures the same kind of culinary-utopian fantasy. Only -- cover your eyes, fatphobes -- it's no fantasy. This book has hard-science cred.

Fat is an integral part of our diet, but its popularity tanked in the 1950s when it became associated with cholesterol, then fingered as a leading cause of heart disease. McLagan makes the case that such a cause-and-effect relationship was inherently flawed, since many cultures with diets high in saturated fat do not have correspondingly stratospheric rates of heart disease (see the butter-loving French and the blubber-loving Inuit).